Six-Men Lassie: Schooner Days CLXI (163)

True Story of a Little Girl on the Lakes Seventy Years Ago.

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WHEN Mrs. Covell of 92 Hammersmith avenue, Toronto, was a little girl, her name was Amanda Quick, and she lived at Presqu'isle Bay.

Her father, Capt. Wm. Quick, built a beautiful new schooner on the bay shore, and called her the Amanda, after her. The Amanda measured 118 tons register. She could carry one hundred thousand feet of lumber. She was white, with green trimmings and red petticoats, and she had a half-clipper bow.

Capt. Quick often took his little daughter sailing with him. Even though she had to stretch to reach the kingspoke of the wheel, she was a good helmsman. Many a time she steered her namesake around the old stone lighthouse on Toronto Point and into the harbor past the little wooden lighthouse now standing on Fleet street, with automobiles whizzing past it.

Fleet street was all deep water then, a quarter of a mile from shore, and the wooden lighthouse wasn't where it is now, but on the end of the Queen's Wharf, about where one lone willow tree stands behind the Rogers Majestic plant.

They used to trade to Dundas, she and her father and a crew of five or six men, loading lumber there for Charlotte on the south shore of Lake Ontario. The only Maritime trade anyone would dream of attempting with Dundas in these days or this century would be by prairie schooner. To us Dundas, seven miles west of Hamilton, seems as inland as Orangeville. We connect it inseparably with truck traffic and the great motor highway.

But Dundas was not ever thus. Schooners were built there - the James Coleman for one, and the Great Western for another. James Coleman and Co. were vessel owners in Dundas. One of their shops was the Three Seas, renamed the Lochiel.

The Armanda would sometimes make two trips a week between Dundas and Charlotte, with $900 freight per trip. Fine returns for a little vessel rated at an insurable value of $4,000 in 1862. The "Dundas Highway" she followed was paved with gold - American gold, for the Civil War was on, and careful skippers insisted on gold payments in the States, and came home with pickle-jars full of American eagles and half eagles, the proceeds of a season's work when banks were little used.

To reach Dundas the Amanda used to sail through the Burlington piers, cross Burlington Bay, and nose into the Desjardins Canal, through the railway drawbridge, scene of the still famous disaster of '57. There was no tow path on either side of the canal. It was just a shallow cutting through the marsh, sometimes with nine feet of water in it, with piling here and there to keep the marsh silt from flowing back. You may still discern some of this old piling as you whizz over the cut-off on Highway No. 2.

In the day of the two Amandas the only way of getting through the canal without a tug—then rare—was to pole the schooner along, men walking from bow to stern, pushing against poles set in the muddy bottom, pulling them out with a weary suck when the walk was ended, and towing them forward to start all over again. The poles made a great splashing among the fleets of geese which almost paved Burlington Bay and the canal with shining whiteness.

Sometimes a stray goose made good eating.

The alternative to poling was running lines from post to post and heaving the vessel along with the windlass or capstans. Sometimes, when the wind was strong ahead, this was the easier way.

One day in the '60s the Amanda piled her decks high with another load of Dundas lumber, and trotted back to Charlotte with it, steering in through the old wooden piers, guided by the stone lighthouse, all overgrown with vines now and dark for decades, but still standing on the hill on the best bank of the Genesee. The first morning, when they came to unload, Tom was missing from the crew. Next day Dick and Harry had gone. So had Hank and Jim. Next day, when the last of the lumber was out of her, even the mate had disappeared.

Bounty-jumping was one of the Canadian sports or industries at this civil war time. Uncle Sam needed soldiers to march through Georgia and other parts. Voluntary enlistment petered out. They tried the "draught," which was just conscription, and bounties or rewards for volunteers. Thousands of Canadians served in the Union armies, from devotion to principle or need of pelf, shouting the battle cry of freedom. And hundreds of others, little to their credit, took the bounty money, or hired themselves as substitutes for Americans who had been draughted, and desert at the first opportunity, and hired themselves over again or took the bounty whenever they could get it. Some were deservedly shot and some were killed jumping from trains, and some got undeservedly rich spoiling the Egyptians.

The Amanda's crew were parading in Rochester in forage caps and blue uniforms, along with the crews of a dozen more Canadian schooners which lay idle in the Genesee. Nothing could be done about getting Tom, Dick, Harry and the rest back. Other captains decided to wait, in the hope that some of the bounty-takers would succeed in deserting, and come crawling aboard in the dark, but Capt. Quick said, philosophically, "Well, I still have two Amandas," and the others good-naturedly fell to and helped him hoist the big sails which required a full crew. One of these captains was old Capt. George, of Brighton, whose crew had stayed with him.

Capt. George threw off their lines for them and, with a fair wind out of the river, and little Amanda at big Amanda's wheel, Capt. Quick sailed for Presqu'isle and home with $900 freight money in the cabin and a winter's work in shipbuilding on his mind.

So much confidence had he in the two ladies of the same name that he set both gafftopsails and the jibtopsail as the schooner dropped out of the piers.

They had a nice quiet run across, all the way, fifty miles. They were all day and all night crossing.

In mid-lake they sighted a large square stick of oak, lost overboard from the deckload of some vessel. There was a great trade in square timber at this time. Capt. Quick had his eye open for material for a third schooner, to be built during the following winter. He had built one for Sarah Jane, his elder daughter, and this one for Amanda, and hoped to build one for her little brother, William John. So he ran his fore gafftopsail down and rounded the Amanda to alongside the flotsam. Leaning far out over the side he slipped a running bowline around one end of the timber. He almost fell overboard in the process but just recovered himself. He led the other end of the rope through the burton tackle to the windlass. Then he hove on the bars and Amanda held slack, and they got the end of the timber up high enough to lash it to the rail.

Next he shifted the running bowline to the other end, and after a lot of heaving, got it also rail high, and at last they swung the big 12-inch stick on deck.

"It'll make a grand keel" cried Capt. Quick, hoisting up the gafftopsail again and letting the Amanda fill away for the north shore.

The wind held light. Sometimes Capt. Quick stretched out for a sleep while Amanda steered and some times he steered while she lay down, or got their food ready. They were all night in the lake. When the sun rose next morning no land was to be seen, but lake gulls came to them through the haze and after a while the tall lighthouse on Presqu'isle Point showed up.

They sailed into Presqu'isle Bay while the day was still young. Old Capt. Leslie, the customs officer, father of R. Y. Leslie, of Brighton, sauntered down to receive Capt. Quick's arrival report.

"Any American cargo?" asked he, as a matter of form.

"No," said Capt. Quick, equally formal, "nothing but a cargo of timber, loaded in Canadian waters."

"Humph," laughed Capt. Leslie, "where are your crew?"

"That little lass there," said Capt. Quick, "is all six of them."

Little Amanda, 75 Years Ago and Mrs. Covell, Now